Bad traditions come from failure to exercise one's rights...
I have pursued this thread with great interest. Kudos to Mpvel for having stood up for his rights. I might have struck a more conciliatory tone and requested only a change in Department policy rather than a reprimand against the officers but then I wasn't "jumped" by public servants. Still, one can scarcely find fault with Mpvel's post-incident actions. Each of us has been endowed with a different degree of audacity.
But to my point...You must exercise all of your rights or you help inaugurate a bad "tradition" that gets lodged in the unwritten portion of our national and state constitutions.
Has anyone ever asked why concealed carry was in many jurisdictions illegal while open carry was legal but had fallen into disuse? Well, even during the days of open carry, carrying concealed was probobly regarded as underhanded...the kind of thing one would expect from gamblers and prostitutes. Open carry, for a variety of reasons, became rarer and rarer in polite society but in many jurisdictions was not actually bad.
Ironically, the Concealed Carry Movement is really just an effort to restore at least some part of our right to bear (instead of merely keep) arms. Open carry was subject to severe social taboos (which police often acted upon, in violation of the law).
The architects of the CCW Revolution probobly knew that their best shot was at legalizing concealed carry as a privilege. Decades of societal evolution had made this possible. Priviledged concealed carry had become the province of the Private Eye and the undercover cop rather than the gambler or the prostitute with a derringer. The pro-gunners thus tried to steep concealed carry in the law enforcement aura and they have succeeded admirably.
I'm not accusing Mpvel of anything when I point out the rhetoric he used in addressing Mr. Mara. Note that he called himself a 'fellow sheepdog' or something to that effect. Concealed Carry permit holders without realizing it, regard themselves as a privileged bunch, the part time protectors of society. I'm not saying that they see themselves exactly as law enforcement but instead as Mpvel said 'natural allies'.
While this rhetorical strategy has produced rich fruit it has its drawbacks.
1. Some CCW holders tend to believe that everyone should have their specialized knowledge if they even contemplate carrying a gun for self-protection concealed or otherwise.
This problem is not too severe because aside from a bit of elitism it encourages responsibility and ensures that active CCW's do not embarass the gun rights movement.
More importantly, no one and I mean no one on this thread has advocated making Open Carry illegal or dramatically increasing the training requirements to obtain a CCW permit.
2. Because some CCW holders do not consider the nature of tradition, they rationalize their discomfort with Open Carry by regarding Concealed Carry as the superior method in all regards, irrespective of the concrete evidence. They fail to consider that when Concealed Carry was beyond the pale, people who regularly engaged in Open Carry probobly touted the merits of their "responsible" method. Of course, back in those days, our rights were generally so secure that few had to be so self-conscious about gun ownership to even be so influenced by their sub-conscious. But let's lay aside the pseudo-psycho babble.
3. Some CCW holders do not appreciate that, by breathing the air of privilege rather than the air of unalienable rights they create a traditional and in some cases actually juridical environment where carrying firearms at all is a matter of privilege.
In Conclusion:
CCW permits should only be seen as the wedge of a larger effort to restore all of gun rights both in theroy and in practice. I got my CCW here in Florida not to actually use it but rather to make a political statement. Someone here can correct me if I'm wrong, but in Florida to my knowledge I don't even have the option of Open Carry. I don't lose sleep over it.
But in a decade or so when CCW has been proven statistically to be, at the very least benign and at the best beneficial in terms of dealing with crime...maybe we can make some movement on Open Carry. Part of CCW is not merely to give people the option of self-defense but also to gradually make bearing arms in a peaceable manner increasingly socially and legally acceptable.
The gun rights movement must ever remain on the offensive. Submission and compromise have already paid their wages to our cousins overseas. I have not desire to work for and collect that paycheck. If you do not like how open carry is being restored in your state then get involved and organize the movement and channel its energies in a reasonable fashion. One of the key ways would be to help furnish people interested in Open Carry with good training.
We cannot walk in fear of the anti-gunners and what the media will say. If we give them nothing to feed on, then they'll make it up. We should not be heedless of the sting of controversy but neither should we cower before it. For tradition to change, norms must be violated, even if only a step at a time.
